The MV Wilhelm Gustloff was a German passenger ship which was sunk on 30 January 1945 by a Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea while evacuating German civilians, officials and military personnel from Gdynia (Gotenhafen) as the Red Army advanced. By one estimate,[3] 9,400 people died, which makes it the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking in history.

Constructed as a cruise ship for the Nazi Kraft durch Freude (Strength Through Joy) organisation in 1937, she had been requisitioned by the Kriegsmarine (German navy) in 1939. She served as a hospital ship in 1939 and 1940. She was then assigned as a floating barracks for naval personnel in Gdynia before being put into service to transport evacuees in 1945.

The ship was originally intended to be named Adolf Hitler but was named after Wilhelm Gustloff, a leader of the National Socialist Party's Swiss branch, who had been assassinated in 1936. Hitler decided on the name change after sitting next to Gustloff’s widow during his memorial service.[4]

Wilhelm Gustloff was the first purpose-built cruise liner for the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF) and used by subsidiary organisation Kraft durch Freude (KdF) (Strength Through Joy). Her purposes were to provide recreational and cultural activities for German functionaries and workers, including concerts, cruises, and other holiday trips, and as a public relations tool, to present "a more acceptable image of the Third Reich."[5] She was the flagship of the KdF cruise fleet, her last civilian role, until the spring of 1939.

German soldiers wounded at Narvik being transported back to Germany on Wilhelm Gustloff in July 1940.

From September 1939 to November 1940, she served as a hospital ship, with her official designation being Lazarettschiff D.

Beginning on 20 November 1940, the medical equipment was removed from the ship and she was repainted from the hospital ship colors of white with a green stripe to standard naval grey.[6] As a consequence of the British blockade of the German coastline, she was used as an accommodations ship (barracks) for approximately 1,000 U-boat trainees of the 2nd Submarine Training Division (2. Unterseeboot-Lehrdivision) in the port of Gdynia, which had been occupied by Germany and renamed "Gotenhafen", located near Danzig. In 1942, the SS Cap Arcona was used as a stand-in for the RMS Titanic in the German film version of the disaster. Filmed in Gotenhafen, the 2nd Submarine Training Division acted as extras in the movie.[6]Wilhelm Gustloff sat dockside for over four years, until she was put back in service to transport civilians and military personnel as part of Operation Hannibal.

Operation Hannibal was the naval evacuation of German troops and civilians from Courland, East Prussia, and Danzig-West Prussia as the Red Army advanced. Wilhelm Gustloff‍ '​s final voyage was to evacuate German refugees and military personnel as well as technicians who worked at advanced weapon bases in the Baltic[7] from Gdynia, then known to the Germans as Gotenhafen, to Kiel.[8]

The ship's complement and passenger lists cited 6,050 people on board, but this did not include many civilians who boarded the ship without being recorded in the official embarkation records. Heinz Schön, a German archivist and Gustloff survivor who carried out extensive research into the sinking during the 1980s and 1990s, concluded that Wilhelm Gustloff was carrying a crew of 173 (naval armed forces auxiliaries), 918 officers, NCOs, and men of the 2 Unterseeboot-Lehrdivision, 373 female naval auxiliary helpers, 162 wounded soldiers, and 8,956 civilians of which an estimated 5,000 were children, for a total of 10,582 passengers and crew.[8]

The ship left Gotenhafen early on 30 January 1945, accompanied by the passenger liner Hansa, also filled with civilians and military personnel, and two torpedo boats. Hansa and one torpedo boat developed mechanical problems and could not continue, leaving Wilhelm Gustloff with one torpedo boat escort, Löwe.[9] The ship had four captains (the Gustloff's captain, two merchant marine captains and the captain of the U-Boat complement housed on the vessel) on board, and they could not agree on the best course of action to guard against submarine attacks. Against the advice of the military commander, Lieutenant Commander Wilhelm Zahn (a submariner who argued for a course in shallow waters close to shore and without lights), the Gustloff's captain—Friedrich Petersen—decided to head for deep water which was known to have been cleared of mines. When he was informed by a mysterious radio message of an oncoming German minesweeper convoy, he decided to activate his ship's red and green navigation lights so as to avoid a collision in the dark, making Wilhelm Gustloff easy to spot in the night. The source or authenticity of this radio message was never confirmed and there was no oncoming German minesweeper convoy as it later turned out.[citation needed]

As Wilhelm Gustloff had been fitted with anti-aircraft guns, and the Germans, in obedience to the rules of war, did not mark her as a hospital ship, no notification of her operating in a hospital capacity had been given and, as she was transporting military personnel, she did not have any protection as a hospital ship under international accords.[10]

The ship and her escorting torpedo boat were soon sighted by the SovietsubmarineS-13, under the command of Captain Alexander Marinesko. The submarine sensor on board the escorting torpedo boat had frozen, rendering it inoperable as had Wilhelm Gustloff‍ '​s anti-aircraft guns, leaving the vessels defenceless. Marinesko followed the ships for two hours before launching three torpedoes at Wilhelm Gustloff‍ '​s port side about 30 km (16 nmi; 19 mi) offshore between Großendorf and Leba soon after 21:00 (CET), hitting it with all three (Marinesko intended to fire four torpedoes but the fourth misfired and the crew had to disarm it).[8] The first torpedo (with text written on it: "For the Motherland") struck near the port bow. The second torpedo ("For the Soviet people") hit just ahead of midships. The third torpedo ("For Leningrad") struck the engine room in the area below the ship's funnel, cutting off electrical power to the ship. Wilhelm Gustloff took a light list to port and settled rapidly by the head. The fourth torpedo (disarmed) was named "For Stalin".[11]

The first torpedo caused the watertight doors to seal off the bow which contained the crews' quarters where off-duty crew members were sleeping. The second torpedo hit the accommodations for the women’s naval auxiliary (located in the ship's drained swimming pool); only three of the 373 quartered there survived. The third torpedo was a direct hit on the engine room, cutting all power and communications. Reportedly, only one lifeboat was able to be lowered, the rest had frozen in their davits and had to be broken free with some lost when they fell or capsized as a result of the panic.[11] The water temperature in the Baltic Sea at that time of year is usually around 4 °C (39 °F); however, this was a particularly cold night, with an air temperature of −18 to −10 °C (0 to 14 °F) and ice floes covering the surface. Many deaths were caused either directly by the torpedoes or by drowning in the onrushing water. Others were crushed in the initial panic on the stairs and decks, and many jumped into the icy Baltic. The majority of those who perished succumbed to exposure in the freezing water.[12]

Less than 40 minutes after being struck, Wilhelm Gustloff was lying on her side and sank bow-first, in 44 m (144 ft) of water. Thousands of people were trapped inside on the promenade deck.[citation needed]

German forces were able to rescue some (a total of 1,252) of the survivors from the attack: torpedo boatT-36 rescued 564 people; torpedo boat Löwe, 472; minesweeperM387, 98; minesweeper M375, 43; minesweeper M341, 37; the steamer Göttingen saved 28; torpedo-recovery boat (torpedofangboot) TF19, seven; the freighter Gotland, two; and patrol boat (Vorpostenboot) V1703 was able to save one baby.[citation needed]

All four captains on Wilhelm Gustloff survived her sinking, but an official naval inquiry was started only against Wilhelm Zahn. His degree of responsibility was never resolved, however, because of Nazi Germany's collapse in 1945.[13]

The figures from the research of Heinz Schön make the total lost in the sinking to be about 9,343 total, including about 5,000 children.[14] This would represent the largest loss of life resulting from the sinking of a single vessel in maritime history.[citation needed]

A porthole window from Wilhelm Gustloff, salvaged in 1988 by Philip Sayers on behalf of Rudi Lange (the radio operator on board at the time of sinking), was donated to the museum ship Albatross in Damp in 2000. The porthole has two steel bars on the outside.

Heinz Schön's more recent research is backed up by estimates made by a different method. An episode of Unsolved History that aired in March 2003 [3] on the Discovery Channel program undertook a computer analysis of her sinking. Using software called maritime EXODUS[15] it was estimated 9,400 people died out of more than 10,600 on board. This analysis considered the passenger density based on witness reports and a simulation of escape routes and survivability with the timeline of the sinking.[16]

Many ships carrying civilians were sunk during the war by both the Allies and Axis.[17] However, based on the latest estimates of passenger numbers and those known to be saved, Wilhelm Gustloff remains the largest loss of life resulting from the sinking of one vessel in maritime history. Günter Grass, in an interview published by the New York Times in April 2003, "One of the many reasons I wrote Crabwalk was to take the subject away from the extreme Right...They said the tragedy of Wilhelm Gustloff was a war crime. It wasn't. It was terrible, but it was a result of war, a terrible result of war."[18]

About 1,000 German naval officers, men and female auxiliaries were aboard during, and died in, the sinking of Wilhelm Gustloff. The women on board the ship at the time of the sinking were inaccurately described by Soviet propaganda as "SS personnel from the German concentration camps", Gestapo personnel, members of the Todt organization and Nazi officials with their families.[19][20][21]

Before sinking Wilhelm Gustloff, Alexander Marinesko was facing a court martial due to his problems with alcohol and was thus deemed "not suitable to be a hero" for his actions and was instead awarded the Order of the Red Banner. Although widely recognized as a brilliant commander, he was downgraded in rank to lieutenant and dishonorably discharged from the navy in October 1945. In 1960 he was reinstated as captain third class and granted a full pension. In 1963 Marinesko was given the traditional ceremony due to a captain upon his successful return from a mission. He died three weeks later from cancer. Marinesko was posthumously awarded Hero of the Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990.[22]

Noted as "Obstacle No. 73" on Polish navigation charts,[23] and classified as a war grave, Gustloff rests at 55°04′22″N17°25′17″E﻿ / ﻿55.0729°N 17.4213°E﻿ / 55.0729; 17.4213, about 19 nmi (35 km; 22 mi) offshore, east of Łeba and west of Władysławowo (the former Leba and Großendorf respectively). It is one of the largest shipwrecks on the Baltic Sea floor and has been attracting much interest from treasure hunters searching for the lost Amber Room. In order to protect the property on board the war grave-wreck of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff and to protect the environment, the Polish Maritime Office in Gdynia has forbidden diving within a 500 m (1,600 ft) radius of the wreck.[24]

In 2006, a bell recovered from the wreck and subsequently used as a decoration in a Polish seafood restaurant was lent to the privately funded "Forced Paths" exhibition in Berlin.[25]

A.V. Sellwood: The Damned Don't Drown. The Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1973, ISBN 1-55750-742-2 (fiction). In Sellwood's own words, this is a "reconstruction of the tragedy", with material drawn from "interviews with some of the survivors and official documents".

Günter Grass: Im Krebsgang, which has been translated into English as Crabwalk. Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2002, ISBN 3-88243-800-2 (fiction). Combines historical elements, such as the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, with fictional elements, such as the book's major characters and events.

John Ries: "History's Greatest Naval Disasters. The Little-Known Stories of the Wilhelm Gustloff, the General Steuben and the Goya". In the controversial Journal of Historical Review, 1992, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 371–381.

Leja, Michael; Die letzte Fahrt der "Wilhelm Gustloff"; ZDF (1 August 2005), reports that earlier estimates of approximately 6000 drowned have been revised upwards by more recent sources to about 9300. An article in German.